


Surging

by midnightdiddle (gooseberry)



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Clubbing, M/M, Memories, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 06:17:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1888122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooseberry/pseuds/midnightdiddle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur fights his way through the crowd to the big freight doors, open to the outside. The cold air is a jolt to his stomach and throat, and he breathes out, slow and shaky, as he leans his forehead against one of the heavy metal doors. It's cold against his skin, and the shock takes the edge off the dizzy, dippy feeling that's pooling in the base of his skull. Too much, too much, and he turns his head, rests his cheek against the door like he had rested it against the girl's head five minutes ago.</p><p>"Are you drunk?" someone asks. Arthur thinks about it. About how he's staggered on his feet, leaning against a freight door like it's a lover. Thinks about the way his body keeps feeling something <i>not here, hot summer days with the sun beating down on dusty roads</i>, and says, "Yeah."</p><p>----</p><p>For <a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="http://hiza-chan.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://hiza-chan.livejournal.com/"></a><b>hiza_chan</b>.</p><p>A club/reincarnation AU thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surging

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my [livejournal](http://midnightdiddle.livejournal.com/234485.html#cutid2).

It's Thursday night, a Ladies' Night, so the club is full of more women and girls than usual. The air smells like beer and sweat, a tinge of sex beneath all of it, and Arthur can feel the night curl beneath his tongue like a lazy cat. Anticipation is a throaty feeling, makes him go heady, and he dances with everyone, arms loose and hips feeling like liquid sand. It is, with one too many drinks and three too many drags, a good night.

His hands are on a girl's hips, just above her tight skirt, and when he looks over the top of her head, he has a moment of

_heat, the summer sun beating down on his neck. sweating beneath the heavy links of his chainmail_

vertigo. He tightens his hands on the girl's hips, rests his cheek against the side of her head. Sweat is running down his back, and he can feel it collect in the small of his back, into the back of his trousers. The club is like

_too many hot summer days, the wheat in the fields dying before it's half-grown. nights spent sleeping on stone, unable to breathe_

a furnace.

He pets the girl's stomach absently, feels her smooth her hand along his hip and thigh. When he pulls away, she spins into another man, drunken laughing and bright eyes. Arthur swallows back the throaty feeling, feels his stomach spin like the girls around him. He's had too many drinks, too many drags. Too many-- lives; dreams; moments tipping his head back until he falls into oblivion.

Arthur fights his way through the crowd to the big freight doors, open to the outside. The cold air is a jolt to his stomach and throat, and he breathes out, slow and shaky, as he leans his forehead against one of the heavy metal doors. It's cold against his skin, and the shock takes the edge off the dizzy, dippy feeling that's pooling in the base of his skull. Too much, too much, and he turns his head, rests his cheek against the door like he had rested it against the girl's head five minutes ago.

"Are you drunk?" someone asks. Arthur thinks about it. About how he's staggered on his feet, leaning against a freight door like it's a lover. Thinks about the way his body keeps feeling something _not here, hot summer days with the sun beating down on dusty roads_ , and says, "Yeah."

The someone laughs, closer, and Arthur lets his head roll on the door until he's looking back into the club, and at a man with dark hair and a skinny, anorexic-looking face.

"I'm not supposed to talk to you," the man says, and he reaches up, pulls at his own hair. His fingernails are painted black, shiny and unchipped, and Arthur thinks of witches and fires.

"Then why are you?" Arthur asks, words slow and syrupy, and the man laughs again.

"Because you're drunk, and I'm drunk, and I can feel the sun."

It makes no sense, Arthur knows, but maybe it's _because_ it makes no sense that Arthur can feel something like understanding, right there on the edge of his brain. Another drink, he thinks, and another drag, and he'll have it, he'll understand

_the way the cloak was always so heavy on his shoulders, like his father's hands, and the way he sank into the sea, halfway to Avalon but never quite there, dead in the water a thousand million times_

everything.

"What are you?" Arthur tries to ask as the man grabs him, cold and clammy hands on Arthur's arms. Arthur breathes through his nose, dizzy air, and let himself take a few steps forward.

"Shouldn't touch you, either," the man says, and when he lets go and walks away, Arthur finds himself following him. It is like-- he is going mad, he thinks. He can't make his feet stop moving, and he can't look away from the man's shoulder. When the crowd surges up around him, like

 _knights shining silver and gold, trumpets and banners and a voice calling,_ to the prince, to the prince, _as the horses scream and die_

waves on breakers, he reaches out, presses the palm of his hand firmly against the man's shoulder. The knit beneath his palm is smooth, and he lets his hand slip a little, so he can feel the friction of the rub and pull. It feels good, like the purr in the back of his throat. Arousal and anxiety are melting through his body.

"Where are we going?" he yells over the thrum of the bass and the throb of the crowd. The man looks back over his shoulder, and Arthur watches him touch the corner of his mouth with a black-tipped finger. The man's smile is fast, and Arthur feels the crowd move around him, waves dragging at his limbs.

The destination is the club's bathroom-- the club, too cheap and liberal by half, has one big, gender-blind bathroom, with grimy stalls covered in vomit and piss and semen. The smell of it is almost enough to make Arthur retch, sickness and sex beneath the tang of spilled liquors. There's a line, kohl-eyed girls with tiny handbags and smeared lipstick. The man stops at the end of the line, and Arthur stops with him, standing close enough to rest his arm along the line of man's back. The knit makes the hair on his arm stand on end.

"What?" Arthur asks, like all the night is a question. He still has to yell, the bass of the music and the thud of the dancing hanging heavy even in the bathroom. The man turns halfway around, and the way he moves makes Arthur's arm twist so it's hanging over his shoulder.

"Sex," the man yells back, and the girl in front of them looks at them with sleepy eyes, half a smile. "We're gonna fuck."

"Okay," Arthur says, and he's a little proud with how calm he's feeling. It might be, he thinks, the cocktail running through his blood, but right now, he feels like he can take on anything and be okay. There is something beautifully numbing about all of this, and he focuses his eyes on the collar of the man's shirt. When he touches it with his thumb, the man shudders a little, and it's easy to wait for the line to move like this, rubbing the edge of his thumbnail over the collar, hangnail catching on the man's skin.

The club's too cheap and too liberal, so when a stall empties out and the man goes in, pulling Arthur in with him, no one bats an eye. As the door swings shut, Arthur sees a girl watching him through the mirror. He smiles at the door, and watches the man reach a hand around him to lock the door.

"Sit," the man says, pushing Arthur towards the toilet. Arthur looks at it, feels a little sick. He hesitates, then lets the man push him down onto the toilet seat. The floor is sticky and wet, and Arthur feels his feet slide a little. When the warm feeling in his stomach curls lower, he swallows, and feels glad he's sitting.

When the man settles on Arthur's lap, straddling Arthur's legs, Arthur turns his face up for a kiss. Sex in bathrooms isn't really his thing, but the few times he's done it, the kissing has been frantic enough, nasty enough, to justify the smell and the wet, sticky floors. The man's just looking back at him, though, four inches that feel like a world in between their mouths, and Arthur can't bridge that gap.

"I," the man says, "have missed you so much," and Arthur can't question the insanity of this. He can only lower his chin to his neck, and watch the man's hands land on his belly, thumbs rubbing in circles, then spreading out. When the man lifts Arthur's shirt, Arthur takes in a breath, lets it out like a waltz. Three beats, and he grabs the man's wrists, holds on. The hands on his stomach are cold, and a fingernail is circling Arthur's bellybutton. The arousal in the pit of his stomach is curling wider, hotter.

"Please," Arthur says. He's too drunk for this, too high for this, and the man laughs like quicksand, his voice sucking in Arthur's _everything_. He palms Arthur's dick through his trousers, then pulls the belt loose, cracks the snap and zipper in a rush of metal and fabric. The hand on Arthur's dick feels like magic, and Arthur thinks he is losing time, and maybe himself.

"Why?" Arthur asks when he is breathing too fast and is feeling faint and empty. He knows everyone in the bathroom can hear this: the wet, slick sound of his dick in the man's hands, his panting, the way the toilet creaks beneath their combined weight. When he lets his head fall back on the metal wall, he feels the stall shudder.

The man moves his head forward, presses his mouth against Arthur's ear. "My king," he says, and the feel of his tongue makes Arthur shudder. "My king."

When Arthur comes, it's with a dizzy, buzzed feeling. He lets his head fall forward onto the man's shoulder, and when the man pulls back, cleans Arthur up roughly, Arthur looks at the stall door. The club is still beating through Arthur's limbs, a steady march to his chest.

"Now?" Arthur asks, a thousand too many questions, when the man unlocks the door. The smile is as fast as it was a time, or a dozen, ago. The man pulls at his hair with his painted fingernails, shrugs, and looks entirely unremarkable, another too cheap, too liberal kid in this crowded, sticky club.

"I've seen you die too many times," the man says, and Arthur watches

_his manservantwizardfriendcompanionknightlovertraitorsaviorbrotherslavegodeverything_

him go.


End file.
